Inefficient inventory management can put more bad impact on your business than you may imagine. The survival of your company almost depends completely on the quality of your products and customer services, which are both directly related to your capability of managing inventory. If you want to drive your business successfully, there is no room for making 4 below common inventory management mistakes:
1. Lack of automation
Without an automatic tracking inventory system, you could lose your money. Regarding to using Excel, it not only takes much time to integrate separate spreadsheets for the final results but also lead the operation to more human mistakes. If you are doing so, you are wasting precious time and your staff energy. This just is an out-of-date method, a modern business always choose an automatic inventory management system.
When your system can automatically sync changes on the data of your inventory such as product quantity, number of orders,.., the information you receive to track the business progress will be totally accurate. Likewise, efficient will be enhanced and cost on labor will be minimized.
2. Wrong demand forecast
What will happen when your products in the stocks can’t meet the customer consumption. Lack of reservation during delivery time between two purchase requests or long warehousing time because of redundancy can both harm your business. Therefore, it is totally necessary to use a smart inventory management system which gives you comprehensive reports and forecast for the demand of your customers. The more accurate your forecast is, the better your manufacturing plan and promotion strategies can be.
3. Inefficent system implemented inside the warehouse
Although you’ve already a smart online inventory management system, it is not enough for your success. You must have an efficient system for physical stocktaking activities. With simply arrangement of products stored in the stock, your employees will not have to spend much time on facility and looking for items. That will help you both to save time and reduce labor cost.
It’s important to set a specific area for each kind of product instead of randomly put them into available space. If you spend a little time and energy at first to build a well-constructed system, you will easily figure out problems with your products when they come and quickly handle them successfully.
4. Less frequent inventory checks
When your business is small, you can check all the problems related to inventory at the end of a short period. But what will happen when your business has expand and you still keep that outdated method? Let’s build a good habit of inventory checking since the beginning. You’d better off scheduling more frequent inventory checks to ensure your operation still work well. It is a good way to keep you on the right track so that you can be clear about the real state of your business: are things going on well or your company is losing profit. Prevention is better than cure.
Investment on inventory management is always necessary for the sustainable growth. With Magento Inventory Management extension, a smart inventory management system based on cloud, you can minimize mistakes to help your business develop continuously.